Wednesday, September 14, 2011

﻿Produced by New Regency for $25 million and distributed by 20th Century Fox, the movie centers on the sexual exploits of Ally Darling (Ms. Faris), a hard-partying young woman who resolves to track down all of her exes—with the help of a hunky amateur sleuth, played by Mr. Evans—in an attempt to avoid sleeping with more than 20 men in her lifetime. ...﻿Still, the idea of such a promiscuous lead character was enough to give some studio executives pause. "We had conversations like, 'Is 19 better than 20?' " says Ms. Smith. Ms. Faris wanted to go in the other direction, suggesting to screenwriters Gabrielle Allan and Jennifer Crittenden that the number of past sexual partners be raised to 50. "They were like, 'No, 20's fine,'" she says.

A slew of new movies centering on women behaving badly have been released or are in the works. Hollywood is aiming them straight at female audiences, and they reflect a redefinition of female sexuality.

Some of these movies have been failures. Crazy, Stupid Love has made only $78 million domestically, as of this writing, and only $21 million in foreign revenues, according to Box Office Mojo. The movie cost $50 million to make and another $30 million or so to market, so the movie is likely a net loss, but not one that is a terrible drag (studios always get considerably less than gross revenues, taking around 75% of the first week end revenue and around 50% of the revenue thereafter domestically, and often selling foreign rights at a fixed fee in concert/bundling with other films). The movies are cheap to make, and Hollywood facing huge drops in DVD revenue, no rescue in 3-D, and no great rescues in streaming, is looking to cut costs and find a formula for making cheap movies they can sell and make profits on, even with reduced margins.

In addition, many studio execs are now courting female audiences, an easy transition from the female orientation of TV, from which many mid-level execs have made their transition. While Network heads and production studio heads in TV remain mostly male, the execs under them are often women, which makes sense given that most people watching television are in fact, women. Male-oriented films are a risk. They can hit big, like the Batman films under Christopher Nolan, 300, Taken, the Transformer movies, and some of the Marvel films. Or they can fail spectacularly, like Green Lantern, or Green Hornet, or Cowboys and Aliens. When the movies fail, they do so at a great cost -- the movies require expensive action sequences, often pricey CGI, and represent considerable downside risk. Since most execs don't share in the upside, they tend to want to hedge their downside. This as much as anything accounts for the desire to make a lot more chick-flicks, just raunchy ones.

What is interesting is that the films are redefining sexuality among women, particularly in acceptable behavior, but that there are still limits. Faris wanted the "number" to be 49 sexual partners, and the lead want to avoid sleeping with 50 not 20 men. The screen writers took a more conservative tack, wanting only 19 partners for the lead, not 49. But the limits are being pushed outward, not inward. This reflects in my view a fundamental unhappiness that modern Western women have with their men. Women in the West have moved to far greater heights, than compared to women in any other time and culture. But they remain unhappy, they want "more" from their men. If they live lives richer and more fulfilled in many ways than Cleopatra, they want Caesar or Marc Antony. Not boring old Beta Male Bill in the cubicle next door.

"Crazy, Stupid Love" falls into this category. The plotline concerns the lead character, played by Steve Carrell, who is having dinner with his wife, played by Julianne Moore. She tells him she's unhappy, is having an affair with a co-worker (played by Kevin Bacon), and wants a divorce. They had married as high-school sweethearts and Moore is the only woman Carrell's character had slept with. The rest of the movie concerns Carrell working with a younger, Pickup Artist mentor (Ryan Gosling), to become attractive to women, and gently rebuffing the 17 year old babysitter who has a crush on him to his 13 year old son's dismay. All so he can "win back" his ex-wife who Carrell's character admits to, "was responsible" for the break-up of their marriage by ... not being sexy enough and desired by other women.

The largely failed, because of course it wasn't attractive to men, and women don't want to go back to a guy who failed initially at being sexy. If a man fails in that regard, women want to trade up. This is the appeal of George Clooney, or Brad Pitt. They ARE already sexy, and therefore are the goal to which female protagonists largely aspire in their movies. Besides, most women would prefer Kevin Bacon to Steve Carrell, fantasy wise. But it is interesting in how Hollywood perceives women's interests, and so far as women are generally unhappy with the state of men today in the West (not sexy enough) that is relatively accurate.

TV is even getting into the act, with Are You There Vodka, It's Me, Chelsea based on the memoir by Chelsea Handler and starring Laura Prepon ("That 70's Show") as Chelsea. The lead character is wildly promiscuous, and often drunk. Set to debut mid-season on NBC, the show like Sex and the City is unapologetic about serial sexual behavior by the attractive female lead. Hollywood in both movies and TV is betting that women are comfortable with portraying lots of sexual partners for women as something not to be ashamed of, at least as long it is below a magic number. That's pretty revolutionary, in terms of what women themselves have defined in the West as acceptable sexuality.

Underlying the promiscuity, in both Sex and the City, and the Handler book and TV series (as well as the Faris movie) are the unhappiness the female leads encounter with the men in their lives. It was Tiger Woods who cheated on Swedish supermodel Elin Nordgren, not the other way around. It is George Clooney who dumps his girlfriends, not the other way around. It is Leonardo Di Caprio, who dumps his girlfriends, not the other way around. Women in the West are desperately searching for a dominant, Alpha A-hole they can keep, and since the price these men extract is casual sex, that is what drives an ever expanding sexual partner count for modern Western Women. As I noted back in 2010,, author Julie Klausner's "I Don't Care About Your Band: ﻿What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, Felons and Others" details her tawdry sexual encounters searching for that elusive, dominant Alpha A-hole male:

﻿Like most of us, she spent her twenties ricocheting from douchebag to douchebag, and she reveals every crappy moment in her dating memoir I Don't Care About Your Band: What I Learned from Indie Rockers, Trust Funders, Pornographers, Faux Sensitive Hipsters, Felons and Others. As expected, there are tons of laugh-out-loud lines delivered from Klaunser's sharp-wit pen. More surprisingly is how cringeworthy tales of blow jobs with goths and bedbug-infested one-night stands are followed with sage observations. For instance, she points out the stark difference between guys and men. (As she writes, if Mad Men was called Mad Guys, it'd star Joe Pesci and not Jon Hamm.)...﻿Historically, leading men, at least in comedy, have featured either the feckless or the boorish: the Fred Flintstones and Bullwinkles and then useless beta males. In my book, I say date guys like Rowlf and Fozzi and not Kermit. Let me think about it....﻿It's the teenage boys I'm worried about. They're not going to college in numbers. They're going to be angry -- depending on who's coming back from the war. There are charities for girls and I'm all for that, but ultimately, the real problem is the epidemic of inferior men - which is basically what my book is about.

Women have been trying to tell men in the West what is wrong. They just are not sexy enough, dammit! Useless, inferior, beta males. That's why they sleep with hipsters, trustafarians, indie rockers, and felons. Ricocheting as the reviewer (herself a young woman) from douchebag to douchebag. Hollywood is dialed into that complaint, itself being populated in middle and near upper level management, by women. Who share the same complaint. Its one thing if say, your husband is Robert Downey Jr. He's a big time movie star. He's Iron Man, or Sherlock Holmes! It is quite another if your husband or boyfriend is some corporate drone, who does not excite respect or more importantly, desire among your girlfriends. If your girlfriend does not want to sleep with him, he's a useless, inferior, beta male.

This is why Hollywood is worth examining. Hollywood tends to respond poorly, like GM before it, to demands by its customers, but it does respond. How it operates, and what it produces, tells you at least what elite women are thinking, and the men around them as well, in terms of how society functions and how they think it ought to function. So far at least, Hollywood (and publishing) recognize that the large amounts of sexual partners their attractive leading ladies (Klausner is not bad looking, Handler quite attractive in her twenties, Prepon a classic leading lady, Faris quite attractive, Moore still turns heads at age 52) end up with in films/stories is a result of there being too few Alpha A-hole men that are willing to commit. To be that reformed bad boy (like Downey Jr.) that has both domesticity, but not too much, an edge like a fighting dog that is well trained.

That this is not a realistic expectation, for the 99.99% of women who lack the supermodel beauty of say, Giselle Bundchen needed to attract a Tom Brady in the first place, has not yet penetrated. But clearly women are not happy with all these partners, preferring in the main to have one great, sexy, dominant, super-guy. And complaining when they don't get one.

The male part of the equation is of course ignored, but Hollywood being a gay-female ghetto that is to be expected.

31 comments:

Who is responsible, for so called, "bad behaviour" of women? Women themselves? No, they are at the mercy of their emotions like they´ve always been. Beta pussies are responsible. They do everything, they will crawl naked through small holes just to get laid. This is the cause. I run a company - and we have many applications form beautiful women, thinking that they could just show up and immediately they get a job. Who taught them this? Who let them go along with everything just due their pretty face? Me or my friends? Not, weak beta pussies.

Women do not want douchebags, jerks and similar scum on the earth. They are only hanging with them because they are more manly than weak beta pussies. They want MEN - males with hard and manly core. They want me and my friends, they would DIE for us, they would betray their family, their friends, themselves even GOD, just to be with us. They would face the whole universe just to be able to suck our dicks. Now, THAT is LOVE, that is BRAVERY, not the enforced slavery - aka traditional marriage, protected by your big daddy - state, which you are dreaming of.

Those weak pussies want to structure society in order to FORCE women to love them. They will NEVER love you! Of course, they could stay with you in a forced marriage on a basis of fear, necessityaor protection, but there is no dignity, no respect, no love whatsoever. Weak pussies invented "game" just to get laid - I will tell you something about "game". It just turns WEAK pussy into the WEAK jockeying clown, fucking the bottom pussies left by da MEN.

You know why are modern women behaving badly? It is because of beta boys, guys without balls. They have spoiled them. They are literally spoiling tons of women every f.cking day. Being in my late thirties, NO SINGLE women behaved badly to me, neither to my friends. They CRAVE US, they ADORE US, they need men like the fish needs water. Does it mean that we are jerks, douchebags or other little pussies, simulating manliness. NO, just the opossite.

Stop being pussies, live your life, handle women as women and not as your comrades and they will eat from your lap. What kind of men would want society to enforce his realtionship with women, to protect him form women? To give him da balls that he himself is lacking? Only weak pussy. You better not procreate.

MAN UP comrades, women are starving, they have been deprived of men..give them men they want.

MAN-up you say? As soon as shame comes back in and no fault divorce goes away. As soon as these women are kicked down so hard and so fast that they don't know what hit them.

Love the posts on FB by these REAL women. Especially how they like to screw married guys, make sex tapes, participate in slut walks, and ARE proud of it. And you expect men to MAN UP for them? For what? Sex? Hell any REAL MAN would run away from them.

Which one is riskier? The escort or the modern woman? Please do tell because there's not much difference there at all from what I can tell. Call them out on what they really are and that's garbage.

not for them, but for YOU! In my twenties I set up a couple of companies. I failed countless times and I had to swallow a lot of frustration/pain. There was so much failure that I had to completely set my ego aside. And then it occured to me. The world is TOUGH. The world is f.cking HARD and being a man - willing to create something from nothing, is a tough job.

You are complaining of women bad behaviour and/or their bitch shields? They are just giving their GIFTS to you, they are challenging you, it is some sort of trial. Some sort of tutorial of being the man in the world. Women are encouraging the boys to become MEN..no weak men, no coward is able to pull AND withstand the relationship with gorgeous woman. There is some sort of fight on a daily basis with queens, do not be mistaken. You have to defeat her every single day, every single hour, in bed, in public, in the car. So as you have to fight in business. Man will do this without effort or even thinking about it - it is just a part of being a man, but weak pussy would collapse.

I have dated my share of the gorgeous women and let me tell you something. I did not let a single of them to behave badly - but you know what? Each of them had a lot of weak orbiters massaging her ego. Those pussies let her go along with everything, she used and abused them, trated them as emotional tampoons..theese are the guys that are spoiling women, this is the cause.

We have a COMMON responsibility for women, they themselves are just little, emotional children, that should be looked after and ordered wat to do. It is harsh but it is the truth. Do not resign this responsibility, my comrades, treat them as da man, treat them HARD. All of us, including women, will benefit from this.

Ok, that is all from me..and pls excuse my poor english, I am from Slovakia. Best wishes.

No-fault divorce etc. is dangerous and destructive, but only because men allow it and sanction it and go along with it. Law only has power because it is respected. If and when men decide to stop respecting it, it will lose its power entirely - and indeed it already does so to a significant extent in the case of those individuals and/or ethnicities that make a practice of holding it in contempt.

Interesting points all around, but what really caught my eye was something at the beginning. You seem to suggest that male oriented Hollywood fare (e.g. action movies) have higher expected profits than female oriented fare (e.g. romantic comedies), but also higher risk or variance.

A basic tenet of finance though is that well diversified investors shouldn't care about asset specific variance, only about how the risk that correlates with their portfolio. Whether the next action film is Transformers or Cowboys and Aliens has little to do with the performance of the stock market.

This suggests that there's a huge opportunity to finance high-risk, high-cost action movies using outside money. I know there has been a few experiments securitizing and selling movie revenues, but I'm pretty vague on the details...

I also agree with you, Tommy. Men are so wimpy today I can't blame women for being so repulsed by them. Men need really need to get their act together. It's largely cultural influences that are emasculating men. It's a very artificial and unnatural society. Now wonder men are seeking escapism and refuge in video games (a very masculine albeit nerdy hobby). Gaming however is enjoyable is mostly a waste of time. They need to fix themselves in the real world.

I have not seen the thing with Palin. It doesn't matter, she was not going to run anyway.

As for financing outside of Hollywood, well News Corp financed about 60% of Avatar's costs with Blackrock IIRC, there have been other hedge fund moves. The problem here is that US-based hedge funds face stricter scrutiny/regulation, and foreign based funds tend to shy away from a very risky business that has a bad odor (studio shenanigans in accounting) compared to easy liquidation of say, Brazilian stocks. You can get out of Brazilian stocks in a day, you can't sell off your investment in making say, Transformers 5. What you say is true about no real difference, but studio execs only care about keeping their job as long as possible and preparing for their next one. So they have every incentive to make lots of crummy, low-revenue movies to make new friends instead of a few big hits/misses.

As far as female sexuality is concerned, what is important for society is the social and economic result, and the wealth consumption or generation that society ends up with.

The normalization of large partner counts, "funny" in the Faris movie but also not any barrier to romantic success (the movie hinges on the character's romantic success or failure) pretty much guarantees in the long run a society of single mothers.

Asking men to be sexy 24/7 is like asking women to all look like movie stars blessed with great genetics, wealth, and personal trainers and cooks. It is not a realistic basis for society. The Western advantage is based on free but not unlimited choice by women oriented towards long-term companionship and faithfulness in men, instead of intermittent sexiness.

The real driver here is female consumerism pushing sex/relationships like handbag purchases. Women are unhappy, but redefining marriage and sexuality is likely to be as successful as yelling real hard at men to "man up." Which is not very.

But Tommy, as has been pointed out ad nauseum, modern society was not built by, and cannot be maintained by, alpha males. Or alphas and omegas, for those that go by Ferdinand's references here: http://www.inmalafide.com/blog/2009/08/27/the-dual-hierarchies-of-men/

No, alphas are only useful in a society that, well, isn't; the environment in which alpha males were the most valuable mating prospects was a world in which life was difficult, painful, and short - the world of the cavement, of a humanity that invented little to nothing and each day was a struggle for survival.

Those men could not build the interstate highway system, the internet, the power grids, the utility lines. Nor can thay maintain them. I cannot call upon Brad Pitt to fix the downed power lines when a storm hits - I need legions of beta males to do this, and the more complicated - and, hence, the more comfortable - the world becomes, the greater the need.

Women and alphas/puas are banking on being able to enjoy the fruits of beta males without giving the betas the shot at reproduction they need to motivate them into building/maintaining society; honestly, most if not all of them are too stupid to understand the necessity of betas in their modern life. In the short term, this will work, as the entire social and legal systems have been warped to support them in their quest for alpha male sex at the expense of betas, but anyone with half a brain can see what is happening and extrapolate to the future. Any plan for fixing the mess of modern society that does not guarantee beta males access to mating rights is doomed to failure; it can only collapse into the primitve state.

A bit OT but related: I am an Omega,and I am sure "tommy" would make mince meat outta me!! I think I may have ADD and a slight case of autism. I am very "far away"ish and lost in stuff. comment? I am thinking of seeing a headshrinker...

You betas have it all wrong. You think you make everything work. You make it work ONLY at the behest of the alphas who figure everything out and then tell you what to do. I can't be bothered with figuring out the solution to a problem and then also digging the trenches. After all, while you are digging the trench to achieve the product of my imagination, I have to be somewhere getting ay-nal from your woman. Yeah I know she is prudish with you, but when she gets with a real man, she wants to be a pig. She saves it for me. The one with the mind.

Have you ever read Schopenhauer's On Women? Are you familiar with the Co Alpha brotherhood website? Schopenhauer stated that women were out of control in his time and must be put in their place. The whole romantic dating idea doesn't work, especially when women are promiscuous like they are today. At least before the late 60's women behaved themselves.

Never a supermodel. An overrated former baby sitter turned gold digger. She's White and blond so her looks are overrated for racial reasons. Nothing special by Scandinavian standards.

The sluttiness factor in American media could also be affected by gays using women as fronts for gay male behavior, see Sex and the City.

Or as a way to pander to male needs to see women as whores. Many men obviously like this, these desires fuel the porn industry obviously.

And Omega males generally have a bitter fascination with the whore type because of their resentment for female independence and female dismissal of them. So they tend to exaggerate female sluttiness - "I'll bet she slept with the entire football team" - out of this Omega resentment.

A little harsh, there's no real indication that she wasn't trying to make a go of the marriage or had cheated on him or was especially greedy. If you believe the gossip that he couldn't go one family holiday without chatting up his whores and/or gave her vd as a thanksgiving present then her behavior hasn't been really out of line.

"gays using women as fronts for gay male behavior, see Sex and the City"

I could never understand how women could like that toxic lump of shit. I think it was the emperor's new clothes syndrome.

It would be much more healthy to just have a gay soap opera without using female stand ins. Not too many would watch it but that would be a good thing.

The big problem is porn inflation. Just as monetary inflation means more money is needed to buy the same goods, in the media more pornish/whorey content is needed to provide the same low grade of titilation.

I sometimes think that we're in the last stages of the separation of porn and mainstream entertainment with "leaked" celebrity sex tapes and not very good nude photos (I'm looking at you Scarlet!) being an intermediate stage before double penetration shots become the new cover of People magazine...

Interesting article and some great comments following. From my perspective as a club promoter for series of bars in a big city, I have quite a different perspective on the whole mythical Alpha male sexual domination and what "women really want." I don't really think there's anything pathologically wrong with beta-males. The guys I see getting the most girls happen to be well dressed, well behaved outgoing beta males. They and their friends either come with a gaggle of girls, some of whom they must be doing, or lock in to one quickly in the night and leave early. These beta males seem to have a better understanding of the rules of social conduct, network a lot and make good connections. They find women that are attracted to clean, vibrant men. This is how they made it through their sports teams and frats in high school and college and how they found their current jobs, or as some would say a "boring office drone."

The goofily dressed "peacocked" outlandish Alpha males tend to cause trouble, and linger late into the night as the "mate" selection dwindles. Yes, some of them do find women, but more often by 2 AM they are angry that their prospects of pussy are gone, so now they want to cause trouble and start fights.

Mabye the beta males don't get as many sexual partners over the course of years, but at least they get stable enriching sexual relations and women that they get to do fun things with. When your connections open up, live becomes much more colorful and vibrant. Doing fun, constructive things outside of sex with a woman is a great thing that the Alpha males miss out on. Plus your reputation doesn't take the same hit as the Alphas.

At the bars I work for, if we notice a PUA we throw them out because they go around high-fiving and attempting to strike up a conversation, or implement some sort of "routine" with every passing woman. This drives the women out, and makes it a less desirable place to be. Money talks, and we can't lose money by being a parlor for PUAs to drive away a dwindling crowd of women.

Beta pussies are responsible. They do everything, they will crawl naked through small holes just to get laid.

and tommy wrote this:

There is some sort of fight on a daily basis with queens, do not be mistaken. You have to defeat her every single day, every single hour, in bed, in public, in the car.

So let me get this straight: betas are bad because they'll do anything for pussy, but tommy is a real man because....he'll do anything for pussy. And the rest of us need to man up, and stop doing anything for pussy. Then we can be real men, like tommy, and have pussy, but only if we are willing to fight endlessly with some entitled snowflake princess, because that proves we are real men and worthy of her pussy.

From my POV is not that men has lost manliness is that first world women had lost the ability of telling apart a good man from a dick with legs, because he treats her like crap and for some reason her friends think she is more desirable for this fact or some other crap like that. Betas do very well on their own in countries with feminine women that are not trying to prove them they are as good as they 24/7, just my two cents.

Perhaps Hollywood is finally starting to replicate (ever so slightly, not nearly there yet) the reality of women and sex. Perhaps this is not "bad behavior" at all - at least not from a woman's perspective.

I just wrote myself about how outlandish it was that they considered 19 to be a lot of sexual partners. When I heard Anna Faris wanted it to be 49, I thought, that's more realistic.

Women really like sex. Most humans do, it's that way by design. And now, women are finally owning it, not apologizing for it because of old-fashioned societal expectations.